Opinion: South Bay confusions

A new Envioronment Agency DNA report on South Bay water quality casts doubt on the draft report.

Bob Roberts

Published:12:30Tuesday 21 November 2017

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The draft DNA report recently released by the Environment Agency with regard to the bacterial issues affecting Scarborough South Bay has now been thrown into doubt following the release of a further report by Jonathan Porter, regarded as an eminent microbiologist within the Environment Agency.

In Jonathan Porter’s report which is the final Environment Agency report, Porter states:

l Unusually high PH values noted on August 8

l The data should not be used as the sole evidence for management activities and expenditure

l That the data is highly speculative and should not be taken in any way as definitive findings

l The speculative nature of this section of the report must be reiterated again at this point; several assumptions have been listed above; any or all must be considered unrealistic.

Numerous other criticisms may also be justified. Porter does however present some good news:

l The Microbial Source Tracking data suggest that pollution for donkeys was NOT a significant source of faecal indicator organisms in these samples.

l High numbers of Intestinal Enterococci and E.Coli are present in the industrial effluent on site

He also goes on to state:

“However, there is evidence that the bacterial community from the industrial effluent can impact on the bacterial community at South Bay. This is estimated to happen 10-20% of the time from this (limited) data set.”

That is an interesting comment, perhaps if full data set had been taken then that percentage may have risen to 70-80% of the time.

In yet another report, undertaken previously (Hull University Campus), for the Environment Agency it states: “The highest abundance and diversity of birds and number of gulls was seen at Scalby Mills during long term sampling”.